Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 137)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:

Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:

Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.

Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself:

GUIDELINE #6: Terminate corporate welfare and other mistargeted programs.

There is no justification for taxing waitresses and welders to subsidize Fortune 500 companies. Mistargeted programs, such as approximately $60 billion in annual corporate welfare spending, come in many formsdirect payments, low-cost loans or insurance, and subsidized servicesbut they all provide services to which special interests are not entitled and that they do not need.

These programs harm the economy. Operating subsidies and loans to private businesses overtax productive sectors of the economy and redistribute that money to less productive sectors, based on the fallacy that it will somehow create jobs. Programs subsidizing start-up companies represent a misguided attempt by government to pick the market’s winners and losers.

In addition, research subsidies for profit-seeking businesses, which already have an incentive to fund their own profitable research, merely displace private research funding with taxpayer funds. Emergency grant and loan programs encourage businesses to take irrational risks with the assurance that taxpayers will cover any losses.

Congress therefore should:

Eliminate direct corporate welfare payments by:

Closing down the Minority Business Development Agency (2004 spending: $22 million, discretionary);26
Disqualifying high-income farmers and agribusinesses from farm subsidies ($8,000 million, mandatory);27
Eliminating the Small Business Administration ($3,978 million, discretionary);
Terminating the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (-$157 million, discretionary);
Shutting down the Trade and Development Agency ($62 million, discretionary);
Eliminating the Market Access Program ($119 million, mandatory);
Closing down the Export−Import Bank
(-$1,582 million, mandatory);
Repealing the Davis−Bacon and Service Contract Acts; and
Terminating the Essential Air Service Program ($57 million, discretionary).

This is how bad it is getting:

Popular Programs Are Growing Rapidly

Lawmakers have had difficulty setting budget priorities in recent years. In addition to funding two wars and the largest anti-poverty budgets in American history, they have increased spending on popular programs like education, veterans benefits, and Medicare at unsustainable rates.

The Daily Hatch